T-Minus another year

In the next two hours NASA is going to try to shoot off Discovery into orbit. A couple of weeks ago I was just about this close to seeing the launch in person, standing on the steamy Florida space coast. But a fuel gauge got in the way of our experience, a gauge that apparently doesn't matter that much this morning. The map at left shows one of the less-close viewing sites, along the causeway, NASA offers for a $15 bus ticket. We were going to be even closer.

I talked with pride in the weeks before that July 13 launch attempt, pleased that I'd held onto the NASA launch transportation tickets I'd bought in January, 2003. My brother Bob and I were set to see a rocket launched in Florida, a brothers-only vacation with a tie back to our boyhoods, when we both grew up in thrall to astronauts and the Apollo moon missions. That was a different NASA, the kind that knew deadly risks were just a part of the job. All of its astronauts were military pilots, no strangers to danger. But almost as soon as I got my launch receipt in 2003, Columbia burned up on re-entry over the Texas skies, killing seven including several mission specialists. Bob and I toured the Kennedy Space Center anyway in early March, went to a few spring training games, and had a great time. I kept my tickets to see the launch "close up," knowing they'd try to return to flight eventually. I only hoped they wouldn't attempt in mid-summer.

Of course, as luck would have it the "Return to Flight" attempts unfolded exactly in the middle of a Florida summer. Abby and I took ourselves to the Space Coast two weeks ago after several rounds of rescheduling, moving our airline tickets and hotel reservations and rental cars from May 15 to May 22 and finally to July 13. Once NASA allowed the Delaware North Corporation, concessionaire that runs the Launch Transportation bussses, to send us fresh bus tickets and our all-important parking pass, Abby and I were good to go.

As it turned out, NASA was not. We got very close, at least in time. Distance to the launch pad was six miles from the open field in front of a lagoon out on Merritt Island, where the Kennedy Space Center fires off its rockets. Abby and I had made the bus trip to the viewing site — promised as the closest the public could get to the pad — and had laid out our blanket, opened our umbrella against the beastly mid-afternoon Florida sun, and put on our latest coat of sunscreen. The commentary on the loudspeakers had helped us figure out which of the many towers in the distance was the launch pad. A low peninsula about three miles out obscured the bottom of the pad, a disappointment since it would block the view of the rocket flames at their largest.

But that was not the biggest disappointment our day contained. A few moments later those loudspeakers announced the launch was scrubbed. We consoled ourselves with a free viewing of Space Station, narrated by Tom Cruise, back at the KSC Visitor Center, then plodded through return traffic back to our Titusville Ramada Inn room.

The trip was not a total loss. We enjoyed fabulous beach evenings, afternoons and a morning so stunning it will become a postcard we send to promote our new 3000 NewsWire blog. Yes, Cocoa Beach and the copious Florida fresh OJ squeezed alongside route A1A, sold from roadside stores like Policicchio Groves — that saved our mini-break vacation when NASA lost its nerve. The waiting at the KSC visitor center was not worth the distance to launch pad, as it turned out. We spent six hours at the center before our bus, one of more than 100 headed to three launch viewing sites, finally took us on our viewing attempt. I wouldn't recommend it unless you really enjoy sweaty crowds, $7 hamburgers and lines in front of porta-potties. There were superior launch briefings on the hour at the Shuttle Dome, completely SRO but with powerful air conditioning. We'd risen at 5 AM for the 4 PM launch, because NASA needed us to be at the security checkpoint by 9:30. I suppose somebody had to be on hand to buy those burgers and browse the gift shop. We didn't disappoint them on either count.

On the bus ride back from our scrubbing, a launch viewing veteran regaled us with his experiences and expert opinions. (No more night launches, he assured us, and the whole shuttle thing is due to wrap up in five years.) He lived in Orlando, a city 40 miles from the launch pad where he assured us everybody will be able to see what's set to launch this morning. So why was he riding the bus with us, having endured his own waiting game? He'd seen a dozen launches, though none recently. Hell, nobody had seen a recent launch, which probably explained the over-subscribed KSC facility and the no-empty-seats bus. The truth is that a launch is something you can see from all over the space coast. After our beachside delights, we decided that returning for another launch wouldn't involve the KSC. A blanket on the beach, with a cooler and decent umbrella and the constant kiss of the Atlantic shore breeze, seemed like the better place to view. Close is nice, sure. But once that rocket gets up into the air, the six miles versus 16 miles really doesn't matter as much.

Once they scrubbed so close to launch, we had to get honest and admit NASA really wasn't ready on July 13, or even a week later. The NASA channel, available on our hotel TV down in Cocoa Beach, put the attempt in perspective. After all, most of us have grown up with the phrase, "If we can send a man to the moon, why can't we..." We take space travel for granted. The NASA administrator said in a press conference, "Sending humans into space is still at the very limits of technology here in the 21st Century."

Plainly put, this is rocket science. I hope NASA gets its flights returned today; the agency's head said yesterday that this flight is one of the three most important in the history of the 24-year-old shuttle program. (The other two were the very first, and the previous Return to Flight, after the Challenger exploded above the launch pad.) Like the signboards in front of restaurants and muffler stores all along the coast said during our five-day visit, "Godspeed Discovery." I'll be back, next time on the beach. And because I went, I'll know where to get the best Italian food I've ever had just down the road in Cocoa's outskirts, and where to wait on a launch that still represents the bravest thing we can do with technology.